


One dream into another

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, dream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean reflects on his past, and how Cas has affected his present situation</p>
            </blockquote>





	One dream into another

Dean always knew immediately when there was an angel hitching a ride in one of his dreams. He would be immersed within a dream when suddenly he’d be struck by two realizations, much the way he always knew when he was awake. The first would be the knowledge that he was, in fact, dreaming. The second would be that he was not alone. The first couple of times it was unpleasant, like the physical feeling of an unfriendly gaze on the back of your neck. Later on, when it was only Cas who visited, it was different. Warmer. A steady hand on his shoulder.  
There was this one time…  
He was sitting on a bench at a playground in the soft, white-gold light of early morning. Children laughed and sang jump rope songs, and in the middle of it all, accompanied by gentle creaks were two children, a boy and a girl, swinging in tandem on a swing set. The boy laughed as the wind tousled his sandy brown hair, kicking his legs wildly, propelling himself higher and higher off the ground. The girl leaned into the swing, and with a mischievous smile at the boy next to her, soared in a wide arc and jumped from the swing, landing neatly on her feet.   
“Hey,” Dean called good-naturedly. “Careful, guys.”  
Seeing what the girl had done, the boy jumped to the ground in a significantly less graceful tumble, and promptly burst into tears. Dean shot to his feet and raced over to where the boy lay.   
“What’s wrong, kiddo?” he asked, propping the boy up.   
The boy responded with a fresh round of sobs.   
“Where does it hurt?”  
Shakily, the boy pointed at his knee, where a small bead of blood welled up where he had scraped it on the rubber playground surface.  
“Do you need a band-aid?” Dean asked, rifling through his pockets until he found a band-aid with little green Hulks on it.  
The boy nodded with a loud sniff, so Dean carefully stuck it on over the scrape.   
“Better?”   
The boy nodded with another sniffle.  
Dean gave him an exaggeratedly stern look. “Do big boys cry?”  
“Yes,” the boy pouted back at him.   
“That’s right,” Dean winked at him and held up a hand. “Up top, little man.”  
With a watery smile, the boy high-fived him.   
“Cry as much as you want, but when you’re done, I brought some pie to snack on. That goes for both of you,” he told the little girl, who had hung back, chewing her lip nervously as she watched the events unfold. “As long as you remember not to be such a show-off in front of him.”   
The girl promised, so Dean sent her to the picnic basket on his bench with a fond push.  
And then Cas was there, watching with interest as he and Dean both became passive observers in the dream. The little girl stood on her tiptoes to open the picnic basket, and withdrew two slices of apple pie. Carefully, she brought them over to where the little boy sat, and they ate the pie together in silence.  
“This couldn’t have waited?” Dean asked, not looking away from the children. He didn’t mean for the words to sound so harsh, but this was such a vulnerable dream to be caught in.   
“I suppose I could call you when you wake.” Cas’s presence tensed, the way the boy had tensed before he jumped out of the swing, and Dean automatically threw a hand out to hold him in place, pressing down on his shoulder even though he realized moments later that it wouldn’t work; Cas wasn’t physically there at all. But he stayed anyway, squinting at Dean in that bemused way of his.  
“You’re here now,” Dean explained, hastily withdrawing his hand. “Might as well stay.” He indicated the bench with his head, and they sat there together, watching as the children finished their pie, and the boy slid carefully back onto the swing. The girl, seeing this, began to push him, gently, so that he never rose higher than her head.  
“There’s no shame in a dream like this.” Cas smiled faintly at the scene: the park, the children, the swing set, the trees.  
Dean shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s just unrealistic, that’s all.”  
“I believe I understand how dreams work by now, Dean. The last time I visited you in a dream, you were sitting on the wing of an airplane in your underwear in front of an audience of laughing adolescents. Does a dream need to be realistic?”  
“It does if it’s something you want,” Dean said, stumbling over the words in his rush to get them out. He’d never said that out loud before. “I just can’t, you know? I’m good where I am, I’m good at what I do. And I can’t raise kids the way my dad raised us.” He passed a hand over his face and laughed bitterly. “I’m a mess.”  
Human problems were so often daunting to Cas, but comforting Dean had always seemed to come naturally to him. It was so easy to open up to Cas about things like absent fathers and responsibilities and not wanting to follow a path that someone else chose for him, because Cas was always right there with him, and even when he wasn’t, he was so good at knowing Dean. And he was kind, but never at the expense of honesty. He was good at being what Dean needed.  
So he told Dean that he’d never seen him fail at anything where it really mattered, and he lay a hand on Dean’s shoulder and told him how much he admired that and Dean’s unselfish, self-denying goodness, but back then Dean wasn’t quite ready to face the realities of the depth of Cas’s affection for him, or his for Cas. So he laughed it off and reminded Cas that he was here on business, and Cas accepted this and told him about the crisis of the day: the seals, the apocalypse, the war in heaven… one of those. What mattered in the end was that they triumphed together.  
He’s happy right now. He’s warm and clean in the bunker’s awesome shower and he’s singing as loudly as he wants to—  
No. There’s a plate of warm apple pie in front of him, a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top and the crust is so perfectly flaky and it smells so sweet and good and when he brings a bite of the pie to his mouth it’s like he’s being reunited with a missing piece of himself and—  
No, that’s not right, either. He’s in the impala in the late afternoon and the sun is in just the right place so that everything is glowing gold and the empty road stretches out for miles in front of him and the music is blasting and next to him in the passenger seat is—  
An angel. Cas. He’s dreaming and Cas is with him, and that’s the only thing that could lift his spirits any higher.  
He drapes an arm across the back of the passenger seat. “Hey, Cas,” he says easily, grinning at the road in front of them.  
Except.  
Except that wasn’t right either. Cas wasn’t an angel anymore, he remembers that now, so—  
He turns and looks just as the angel next to him voices a greeting. “Hello, Dean.”  
It is Ezekiel. Not Ezekiel as he is currently, the blue flash in Sam’s eyes and the odd expressions on Sam’s face, but Ezekiel as Dean first met him, wearing the face of a stranger.  
“Zeke.” He nods his head, acknowledging the angel.  
“I apologize if I disappointed you, Dean.”  
Zeke sounds genuinely apologetic, but Dean waves it away. “Naw, I’m just, you know, surprised.” He’s been telling so many lies lately, what’s one more? “What can I do you for, Zeke?” Zeke cocked his head in that confused angel way, and Dean had to laugh. “What’s up?” he elaborated. “Why are you here?”  
“I needed to talk to you,” Zeke tells him, so stiffly, “and I believe it upsets you when I speak through Sam. This way there’s no need for that.”  
“Thanks, Zeke,” Dean says, a bit taken aback. “I—uh, I appreciate it.”  
“We need to speak about the prophet,” Zeke continues. “I’m worried he is becoming to adept at using the technology of the bunker. He may be able to locate the angels who were cast out of heaven, and if that happens—”  
“Giant neon sign pointing right at you,” Dean finishes for him. “Got it. I’ll have a talk with him.” Kevin’s a stubborn kid, but Dean resigns himself to the task, figuring he’ll be able to make up excuses, distract him with tablet stuff, at least until Zeke is gone.  
Zeke places a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I appreciate the stress you are experiencing, lying to your loved ones. Rest assured that Sam is healing.”  
Dean relaxes under the gentle pressure of the hand on his shoulder and the kind words. It would be so easy to trust Zeke. Dean has trusted him from the beginning, because, what choice does he have? And the angel is so empathetic, and it’s been so long since he’s told the whole truth. He feels the words, locked and loaded, at the tip of his tongue.  
“I’m sure it is especially difficult so soon after you told Castiel how much he means to you.”  
Dean jerks away as if struck, heart racing, the words evaporating from his mind. He collects his thoughts enough to compose his face, forcing his body (the dream version, at least) into the approximation of relaxation.  
“Another time, maybe,” he says, forcing a grin at Zeke. “You should probably get the hell out of dodge. Sam should be waking up soon.”  
If Zeke is surprised at the rejection, he doesn’t show it. He simply, in true angel fashion, disappears.  
Dean, too, can feel himself waking up, but he resists it, clinging on to this space where he doesn’t have to wonder why this stranger knows him too well, why it’s so easy to confuse him with the two most important people in his life, and why this dick is still in his brother’s head—why he, Dean, is letting it happen, trusting this guy with so much, even though he didn’t know him from Adam just a few weeks ago.  
So for a few moments more, he drives off into the setting sun, replacing his thoughts with the blasting music.


End file.
